Now You See it, Now You Don’t: TV “disappearing”
There was an essay in Forbes last week entitled “Television 2.0,” which talked about how “television as we know it today is about to disappear.” And what is causing TV to disappear after more than a half-century of cultural dominance? The Internet: “The convergence of TV with the Internet is transforming a technology that has gone largely unchanged for 60 years — a one-way, TV signal broadcast to a screen, whether that screen is a TV, PC or cellphone. Television is on the verge of becoming completely personalized, interactive and enjoyed on-demand.”
As someone who has had a DVR cable box for the past couple of years, I can safely say that it’s an amazing and wonderful thing, and it has completely changed the way I watch and think about TV. For starters, I rarely watch programs when they’re broadcast. Most often, I’ll record something and watch it at least a day later (if not a week later). And of course, when I do, I don’t watch the commercials; I fast-forward right past them. Even the nightly news I don’t watch until I get home a little past 7PM. It’s a great feeling to know that I don’t have to rush home to catch a TV show, that I can actually live my life and still watch the occasional TV show I want to watch (when I want to watch it).
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. From the Forbes story: “Imagine a news broadcast where you as the viewer pre-select the types of stories you want to watch; television programming with interactive multiplayer gaming; personalized viewer-specific content and advertising embedded within national television broadcasts; highly localized and efficient Emergency Broadcast System and Amber alerts; viewing and interacting with the vast and growing catalog of high-quality, user-generated content.”
As I read things like that, I get really excited thinking about what Publishing 2.0 is going to look like, and how it’s going to change the industry. That is, if the industry is willing to embrace change and allow itself to be reinvented. Because if it doesn’t, and publishing “disappears” the same way as our notions of television are today similarly being erased, it might not be replaced.
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Wonderful post. I completely agree that if publishing (and TV) don’t allow themselves to be redefined - they will ultimately become obsolete. If they can allow this (and actively shape it) then they will continue and we’ll have the benefit of all the knowledge those industries have accumulated while enjoying the shape of things to come!
Jeff you are right to point this out. Its amazing how disruptive technologies like TiVo and other DVRs, YouTube and others have shifted the balance away from real-time broadcast television.
With 3 TiVos in the house I can’t tell you the last time I watched “live” TV. In fact, I don’t really think about it now - TiVo “is” TV
As a Publisher, this type of shift is scary stuff. The hardest part for companies like the one I work for is to realize the shift if occurring - especially when they are still making money “the old fashioned way.”
Yeah, you’re right that for most people TiVo means TV, the same that, for most kids, music means iTunes and their iPods. In terms of publishing, we need to realize the “shift” may turn into an earthquake, and the decisions we make now will determine which side of the fault we end up on.
But nothing will ever replace the television! There is a unique and emotional bond the viewer forms with the strong physicality of a television, the way your hand fits in the remote control, the mark a TV leaves on your rug, the smell of the dust heating up when you turn it on, the way a baby responds viscerally to the sound of a McDonalds jingle, the way you can watch it in the bathtub (oops, wrong device)…
Ha, yeah; like gasoline will never be replaced since with, you know, electric cars, because there’s no gratifying pumping the liquid into the tank, or paying through the nose, or the awful smell.